I How to escape a higher cost of living 



THIRTY CENT BREAD 



£§&£ 



ALFRED W. McCANN 




Class ^ __ 

Book._ 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



THIRTY CENT BREAD 



ALFRED W. McCANN 



With regulation now, we can have all the 
food we need for home use and export to our 
allies 200,000,000,000 pounds. Without regu- 
lation WE SHALL HAVE BREAD CARDS AND SOUP 
EITCHENS WITHIN A YEAR. 



THIRTY CENT BREAD 

How to Escape a 
Higher Cost of Living 



BY ,~ 

ALFRED W* McCANN 

MEMBER AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF CLINICAL RESEARCH 
AUTHOR OP "STARVING AMERICA," ETC. 




NEW YORK 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 






COPYRIGHT, 1917, 
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 



MAY 24 !9i7 



FEINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 

©CLA462655 



DEDICATED 
TO 

THE UNITED STATES 

AND 

HER EUROPEAN ALLIES 



INTRODUCTION 

At the first day's session of the Sixty-Fifth Con- 
gress of the United States, Monday, April 2, 1917, 
when President Wilson read to the members of both 
houses, assembled in joint session, the most momen- 
tous message which any President of the United 
States has ever been called upon to make, he said, "It 
is a fearful thing to lead this great, peaceful people 
into war — into the most terrible and disastrous of all 
wars, civilization itself seeming to be in the balance. 

"It will involve the utmost practicable co-operation 
in counsel and action. ... It will involve the organ- 
ization and mobilization of all the material resources 
of the country to supply the materials of war and 
serve the incidental needs of the nation in the most 
abundant and yet the most economical and efficient 
way possible. 

"In carrying out the measures by which these 
things are to be accomplished ... it will be our 
very practical duty to supply the nations already at 
war with Germany with the materials which they 
can obtain only from us or by our assistance. They 
are in the field and we should help them in every 
way to be effective there/' 

These passages, as inspiring as any passages of 
that wholly inspiring and never-to-be-forgotten doc- 
ument, apply first of all to foods which, no longer 
belonging to us exclusively, we are under obligation 
to divide with allies who face want, if not starvation. 

vii 



viii INTRODUCTION 

Europe needs our food, needs it in larger quan- 
tities than under present conditions we are able to 
provide. This assertion, literally true at this hour, 
shall remain true only in so far as we ignore the 
undeveloped resources that lie at hand. It will re- 
main true only in so far as it rests upon our wasteful 
standards of the past, our pinched capacities of the 
present and our failure to heed the unpromising 
prospects of the future. 

Certain changes in our old standards and certain 
extensions in our present capacities have been urged 
by earnest and patriotic men. But, at their best, they 
fall far short of the service which the President 
expects us to render, which he promised we would 
render, and which every one of us in abundant and 
heroic measure is eager to render. 

Our lofty expectations cannot be realized. Our 
earnest promise cannot be fulfilled. Our high duties 
cannot be discharged unless we go much farther than 
any of the suggestions heretofore offered or any of 
the plans now contemplated. 

Austria and Germany acted at the very beginning 
of the war. War bread, grain regulations, meatless 
days, fruit and vegetable dehydration were intro- 
duced at once. Notwithstanding these prompt pre- 
cautions the pinch of want has made itself felt in the 
trenches and in the homes of the Central Powers. 

England projected no serious food regulations for 
nearly two and one-half years after war had been 
declared. France delayed radical action until alarm- 
ing shortages compelled the belated regulations that 
went into effect March 12, 191 7. 

The United States fully understands that she must 
supply, in addition to her own food, vast quantities 



INTRODUCTION ix 

of food for her European Allies. The urgency and 
abundance of this supply will remain the same 
whether speedy peace is declared or war continues 
to the end. 

Efficient, victory-winning aid, unaccompanied by 
misery at home, is what the United States valiantly 
hopes to extend. Limited aid, much less than we are 
called upon to render, is all that our present plans, 
patriotic as they are, make possible. 

Here in America, unless these plans are seriously 
modified and radically extended, bread cards will be 
inevitable. Already vast numbers of American cit- 
izens seriously feel privation. 

One New York City butter house, distributing 
from door to door less than a year ago nearly 
100,000 pounds of butter weekly, distributes now less 
than 60,000 pounds in the same period and this quan- 
tity is constantly shrinking. Many people cannot 
afford to buy butter and are seeking cheaper substi- 
tutes, the supply of which is far below the demand. 

The same situation is true with respect to meat, 
eggs, vegetables and fruit. To an ever-increasing 
extent the plain people must depend on cereal foods. 
For this reason the necessity of providing the max- 
imum nutritive qualities of our highly milled grain 
foods is obvious. 

We are promised an enormous increase in vege- 
tables. Our ability to conserve the surplus and carry 
it over is alarmingly inadequate. Half our normal 
yield of fruits and vegetables rots in the field and 
orchard. Our hardiest vegetables, as far as their 
keeping qualities are concerned, are none too hardy. 

What we have heretofore kept have been kept in 
cans. But the canneries are now wholly unable to 



x INTRODUCTION 

take care even of a normal yield. Whatever surplus 
is produced must perish unless the suggestions made 
here are acted upon immediately. 

By taking action now we can profit by the costly 
experience of all Europe and thus stand fully 
equipped to serve democracy to a glorious end. By 
deferring action we shall lose the greatest oppor- 
tunity ever presented to a free people and at the same 
time plunge our prosperous country into the very 
tragedy which we now seek to avert. 

To the end that we may have plenty for our own 
needs and mighty stores to ship to our European 
Allies, as fast as bottoms can be provided for their 
transportation, these words are written. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Food or Famine 15 

Regulation Without Misery 15 

Food Shortage 16 

Food Reform or Famine 18 

Short Rations 20 

Wheat 22 

Scarcity or Plenty 23 

Corn 25 

Eat the Germ 27 

Dry Milk 29 

Converted Slops . . 30 

Azot, the Horse 31 

The Potato Supply 33 

Barley, Rye, Rice 35 

Saved 36 

Food for Animals 37 

Hurrying the End 40 

Fruits and Vegetables 40 

Army and Navy 42 

Better than Germany's 43 

Rot on the Ground 44 

Shortage of Tin 45 

No Loss 46 

The Test 47 

Carrots 50 

Turnips 50 

Soup Vegetables 50 

xi 



xii CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Spinach 51 

String Beans 51 

Tomatoes 51 

Raspberries 52 

Peaches 52 

Rhubarb 52 

Results 52 

Potatoes * 53 

Onions *. 54 

Cabbage 54 

Apples # 55 

The Big Reason 55 

Science 56 

Women and Children 60 

The Baby 60 

The Soup Kettle 64 

Kitchen Waste 65 

Mineral Food 65 

More Soup, Less Medicine 67 

Eggs 67 

Allowed to Spoil 68 

The System 71 

The Gambler 72 

Federal Control 74 

Manipulation 74 

Supply and Demand 76 

The Banks 77 

The Short Dollar 78 

Commercial Ethics 79 

Speculation 80 

Mobilization 81 



THIRTY CENT BREAD 



THIRTY CENT BREAD 



§ I FOOD OR FAMINE 

Unless the United States Government decides to 
place an embargo at once upon the milling of white 
flour, the bolting of corn and the destruction of 
cereals in the manufacture of whiskey, grain alco- 
hol and commercial products, misery lies ahead. 

One food shortage after another has been re- 
ported. We have been warned and warned and 
warned. The old story of procrastination is being 
retold in our official indifference to food prepared- 
ness. 

For years we have dallied with an unequipped 
army and navy; have refused to look the future 
in the face; have blindly trusted in something that 
all of us now look back upon with regret and bit- 
terness as a policy of "Things- Will-Take-Care-Of- 
Themselves-If-God-Doesn't." 



§ 2 — REGULATION WITHOUT MISERY 

"If we had only prepared!" we cry. Surely the 
lessons of our indifferent regard for the future have 
been learned. Yet, we go on talking vaguely about 
"the mobilization of the agricultural interests of the 
nation, about the formation of a commercial econ- 
omy board, about legislation to limit the period of 
cold storage and to prevent speculation in foodstuffs, 

15 



1 6 THIRTY CENT BREAD 

about nationalizing the vacant lot garden plan, about 
encouraging the farmer and truck grower to plant 
a maximum, guaranteeing him against loss through 
over-production. " 

These things are all good. They are as laudable 
as they are inevitable. Nothing can stop them. Prim- 
itive forces are at work moving them along. The 
temper of the people demands them. The instinc- 
tive recognition by the masses of an ugly outlook 
filled with needless privation and preventable suf- 
fering will sooner or later express itself in a tidal 
wave of retribution, furious and overwhelming, that 
will swamp any man or group of men blind enough, 
foolish enough or selfish enough to interfere with 
these imperative reforms. 

But what about the system that now depletes our 
short crops through unnatural commercial processes 
that not only contribute nothing to the daily needs of 
the people but which actually withdraw from them 
both bulk and brawn. 

If we continue to refine our cereals drastic regula- 
tions will inevitably follow. But, they will follow 
too late to prevent preventable misery. If we end 
this system now we shall have the regulations with- 
out the misery. 

§ 3 — FOOD SHORTAGE 

When David Lubin, American representative to 
the International Institute of Agriculture, at Rome, 
announced, via Paris, April 5, 1917, that the world's 
food crop is deficient and the situation alarming he 
sounded what should have been the last word of 
warning necessary to move us to action. 



THIRTY CENT BREAD 17 

These were his words, "For the first time in many 
years there exists a deficit in the supply of corn, 
wheat, rye, barley and oats estimated at a total of 
130,000,000 bushels less than the normal require- 
ments for countries open to trade. 

"The situation is worse than was expected last 
October. We must profit by Europe's experience 
before meal tickets become necessary. We can avoid 
high prices by the elimination of waste, by the grow- 
ing of more food and by effective organization of 
our food supply, a thing more important than get- 
ting men into the army. 

"Two months after the beginning of the war Ger- 
many forbade the use of wheat or rye for feeding 
live stock and two months later requisitioned all sup- 
plies of food." 

To-day we convert priceless wheat and corn into 
manure. A thousand pounds of corn plus 10,000 
pounds of other foods are turned into 500 pounds 
of dressed beef, one-third of which, in the form of 
bone, tissue and trimmings, is inedible. 

Far better would it be for America now if we took 
over our packing plants and cold storage warehouses, 
killed our steers, ate them and converted the whole 
grain upon which they partly live into unbolted hu- 
man food than to go on manufacturing manure 
and misery. 

Milk cows are just as important to the juvenile 
population of the United States as war bread and 
whole meal foods are important to all the people. 
Our milk cows must be provisioned. Without milk 
our babies and younger children cannot live. War 
demands sacrifice. We must face that sacrifice now. 

Steers are not rep/oductive. Even though we 



1 8 THIRTY CENT BREAD 

slaughtered them all we would not by that act affect 
in the slightest degree our meat supply of three years 
hence. The beef -yielding steer can become neither 
father nor mother. We can do without it at least for 
a time, at least for as long as is necessary in order 
thereby to provide against famine, malnutrition and 
decay. 

D. T. Gray, professor of Animal Industry, Ala- 
bama Polytechnic Institute, and his assistants have 
demonstrated that cattle can be fed in Alabama at 
a cost far below that common in the corn belt and 
this often with inferior, underbred or scrub cattle. 

George M. Rommel, chief of the Animal Hus- 
bandry Division, the U. S. Department of Agricul- 
ture, speaking of the beef -cattle shortage which the 
United States is facing, says, "The cattle ranges of 
the west are every year being diminished in area by 
settlement. In the South, east of the Mississippi 
River, are enormous areas of practically idle lands 
suitable for pasture where beef-cattle can and should 
be raised and fattened." 

The government has all the information it needs 
if it will put the United States Public Health Serv- 
ice, the Bureau of Animal Industry and the other 
branches of its scientific departments to work in co- 
operation with army, navy and civilian authorities. 

The consumption of grains by cattle and swine 
when these grains are needed by the human family 
can be vastly curtailed. 

§ 4 — FOOD REFORM OR FAMINE) 

Give us war meal, war bread; save from waste 
our rotting vegetables and fruits by dehydration; 



THIRTY CENT BREAD 19 

put an end to the evil system that now converts into 
slops for feeding hogs the millions of pounds of 
skim-milk which our centralizers, creamery butter 
factories and the farmers who supply them make 
no effort to conserve ; stop up the leak through which 
millions of dozens of eggs, perfectly good when laid, 
are allowed to rot in their shells before they can be 
consumed; reform at once the abuses of our fish- 
ing industry which are wanton in the extreme and 
which, if controlled, would add millions of pounds 
of wholesome food to our national larder every 
year. 

This is part of the programme necessary to enable 
us to feed ourselves and the rest of the world until 
the revolution now scourging humanity comes to a 
happy end. 

To supply food for the 1,735,600,000 inhabitants 
of the countries at war and their neutral neighbors 
is a world problem. Upon an adequate and efficient 
solution of this problem rests the physical welfare 
of humanity. Should red tape interfere humanity 
will pay the price in hunger. Men will fag, women 
will wither, childhood will be stunted and infants 
come into the world without life. 

The most agonizing question among all those 
which now glare under the light of this twentieth 
century cataclysm is that of the future of the food 
supply of the masses. 

The call to arms in every belligerent country, ab- 
sorbing all the strength and youth of the nations, 
draining the farms to fill the factories, are warnings 
not only against waste, not only against stupidity, 
but against the repressing and discouraging influ- 
ences of official red tape. 



20 THIRTY CENT BREAD 

As long ago as July 15, 19 16, Marquis R. Capelli, 
president of the International Institute of Agricul- 
ture at Rome, in a statement to the Associated Press, 
said: 

"Among the ultimate results of this war will be 
the increasing interest taken by governments in the 
development of agricultural wealth, namely, By the 
Encouragement of Co-operation and Associa- 
tion, by promotion of instruction in agricultural 
matters, by the creation of many model farms and 
agricultural intelligence bureaus." 

Wherever we look we see, as we never saw before, 
our interdependence upon each other. Even as the 
right hand co-operates with the left to clothe and 
feed the body; even as the eye and ear co-operate 
with each other to inform the brain; even as lungs 
and heart co-operate in silent unison with the other 
glands and organs that provide the brain with en- 
ergy to direct the whole, so should every department 
of our national government co-operate with every 
other department that the trials at hand may be 
borne without the accompanying miseries which self- 
willed folly is sure to beget. 

§ 5 — SHORT RATIONS 

As the minds of men are sobered and chastened 
by an outlook filled with gravity they instinctively 
recognize the proposition that no national industry 
and no single arm of the national government shall 
be permitted to impose its will selfishly upon the na- 
tion at the expense of the masses. 

It is my purpose here to point out a number of 
flaws of great magnitude and significance in our 



THIRTY CENT BREAD 21 

present conception of co-operation as it affects the 
food supply of the people. 

It is quite clear that, peace or war, we face the 
stern necessity of feeding European soldiers and 
civilians, even though the inevitable consequence of 
our programme means hunger at home. 

The president of the agricultural committee of the 
Chamber of Deputies announced, March 9, that 
France faces a deficit of 127,000,000 bushels of 
wheat in the coming year. 

The same authority declared that the aggregate 
deficit of wheat for the Entente Allies and European 
neutrals was between 190,000,000 and 216,000,000. 

It is not remarkable, therefore, that the bulk of 
the foods now demanded from us by Europe should 
consist of our cereals. But how are we to give them 
what we haven't got? The obvious but superficial 
answer is, we can't! The real answer is, we can! 
even though, according to our own authorities, we 
already face a shortage at home. 

The crop reporting board of the Bureau of Crop 
Estimates, Washington, D. C, reports that we had 
less corn March 1, 1917, on our farms by 327,143,000 
bushels than we had March 1, 19 16. 

The same authority reports the quantity of wheat 
held on our farms, March 1, 1917, was only 101,- 
365,000 bushels, whereas March 1, 1916, we had 
more than double this quantity, or 244,448,000 
bushels. 

One year ago we also had on our farms 598,148,- 
000 bushels of oats, whereas March 1, 1917, we had 
only 393,985,000 bushels. 

Of wheat alone, according to officials of the De- 
partment of Agriculture, the available supply in this 



22 THIRTY CENT BREAD 

country will fall 26,000,000 bushels short of meeting 
our own needs up to next harvest if we continue 
to export on the same scale as last year. 

It is evident, then, that we find ourselves in the 
position of the head of a household who is called 
upon to feed a constantly increasing number of chil- 
dren with a constantly decreasing quantity of food. 
Unless we open our eyes it can't be done. If we do 
open our eyes it can be done and none of us will be 
any worse off for our experience. 

The European governments, who have had three 
years of war with all its horrors to educate them, 
now manifest an interest in the production and dis- 
tribution of foodstuffs which our own government, 
even when preparing to enter war regardless of its 
consequences, showed no signs of imitating. 

In Europe the food value of so-called cereal by- 
products discarded in times of plenty, is now fully 
recognized. In America, although the situation is 
just as tense, we do not appear to be interested. 

§ 6 — WH£AT 

We know nothing of the actual quantity of wheat 
which will be produced in 19 17 in the United States. 
But we do know that the average production for 
the last ten years is approximately 750,000,000 
bushels. Let us hopefully assume that the 1917 pro- 
duction will not be less than 750,000,000 bushels, all 
of which will be milled into white flour. 

As we now conduct our milling processes it re- 
quires eight bushels of wheat to produce five bushels 
of flour. Out of every unit of eight bushels of wheat 
three bushels of the most nourishing and most indis- 



THIRTY CENT BREAD 23 

pensable elements of nutrition are rejected by man 
and turned over to cattle. 

Seven hundred and fifty million bushels of wheat, 
containing fifty-seven pounds to the bushel, will pro- 
duce, as a result of our wasteful methods, no longer 
permitted in Europe, 135,912,000 barrels of patent 
flour weighing 196 pounds each, and 81,792,092 bar- 
rels of "waste" weighing 196 pounds each. 

France was the last of the European nations to 
put an end to this waste. March 12, 1917, the 
French regulations requiring that all bread shall be 
made of meal containing all of the wheat went into 
effect. 



§ 7 — SCARCITY OR PI^NTY 

If we were to follow such regulations in the 
United States we would immediately increase our 
production of flour by 81,792,092 barrels, or nearly 
one barrel for every man, woman and child in the 
country. 

The quantity of flour now rejected as human food 
by the United States citizen is in itself sufficient to 
supply all the flour needs of this country, leaving the 
balance of 135,912,000 barrels for export. 

Yet, if instead of rejecting this quantity of food- 
stuffs by our present systems of milling we were to 
convert it to our own use we would have eight loaves 
of bread every week for every man, woman and 
child in the United States, thus making it possible in 
our extremity to share what we have with Europe 
without loss to ourselves. 

Out of every unit of eight bushels of wheat pro- 
ducing five bushels of highly milled flour we produce 



24 THIRTY CENT BREAD 

four grades known as "patents," "straights," 
"clear," and "low grades." The "patents" to-day 
are worth $10 a barrel, the "straights" are worth 
$9.50 a barrel, the "clears" are worth $9 a barrel, 
and the "low grades" are worth $7.50 a barrel. The 
rejects are worth only what we can get for them. 

The nourishing quality of the low grades, which 
cost $2.50 less than the "patents," is immeasurably 
superior to the nourishing quality of the more highly 
milled, and therefore more expensive, patent flour. 

When patent flour is quoted at $10 a barrel whole 
wheat flour is quoted at $7.50 a barrel — just $2.50 
less. 

By milling all of the wheat, as is now done in 
Europe, we not only increase the quantity available 
for human consumption, but we automatically reduce 
the price. If we turned the whole of our 750,000,000 
bushels of wheat into 217,704,092 barrels of whole 
wheat flour the cost at this rate would be $544,260,- 
230 less than the cost of producing as many barrels 
of white flour. 

The rejected three bushels out of every unit of 
eight bushels consist of brown bran, yellow germ, 
and white or gray middlings. Without these three 
rejected products no flour will support life. With 
them man and his children can live indefinitely, even 
though he eats little else. 

Thus in time of stress a change in our milling 
system, which would retain these rejected products, 
would not only increase the total quantity of wheat 
products for human consumption by nearly 38 per 
cent, and reduce the cost by 25 per cent., but it would 
immeasurably increase the food value of the whole, 
converting a one-sided, denatured, and inadequate 



THIRTY CENT BREAD 25 

food into a complete, life-sustaining product contain- 
ing every element necessary to human nutrition. 

The two-headed factor of expediency and econ- 
omy obliges us to disregard the objections of the 
milling industry by assuming government control of 
every bushel of wheat and every pound of wheat 
products produced therefrom. 

There is no need to develop hysteria over the food 
shortage situation. Even though the Department of 
Agriculture, April 7, 19 17, did show us that we are 
facing a serious deficit in wheat, corn, oats and bar- 
ley, and that owing to the extra demands of Europe 
upon us for these very foods the outlook is exceed- 
ingly gloomy, by adjusting our needs to our supply 
we cannot only go on exporting, without incurring 
the risk of hunger at home, but we can actually part 
with much more food than any of our statistics seem 
to make possible and still leave an abundance for 
human consumption. 

§ 8 — CORN 

The crop reporting board of the Bureau of Crop 
Estimates, Washington, reports that we had less 
corn March 1, 1917, on our farms by 327,143,000 
bushels than we had March 1, 19 16. But, we are rea- 
sonably sure of producing in the United States dur- 
ing 191 7 2,500,000,000 bushels of corn. 

We have not produced less than this quantity in 
any one year since 1907. In 191 5 we produced more 
than 3,000,000,000 bushels. It is hardly probable 
that we will now fall below the lowest record of ten 
years. 

Ordinarily we export about 100,000,000 bushels of 



26 THIRTY CENT BREAD 

corn annually. Even though in 191 7 we should be 
called upon to export 500,000,000 bushels we would 
still have for our own use 2,000,000,000 bushels. 

Of this amount every year 50,000,000 bushels are 
converted into glucose and laundry starch. The 
glucose is used for numberless technical purposes, 
including the manufacture of pastes, sizes, blacking, 
printers' rollers, shoe polish, silvering glass for mir- 
rors, liquid soaps, hair tonics, sponges, and in the 
tanning of leather, the roasting of coffee, the polish- 
ing of rice, and the production of logwood. 

Enormous quantities of corn are employed in the 
production of dextrines, used in the textile indus- 
tries; for strengthening the fibre and finishing the 
fabrics of cloth, carpets and twine; for the thicken- 
ing of colors for calico and other printing; for 
leather dressings ; for gums and glues ; for ink, mu- 
cilages, and adhesives. 

Corn oil and paragol are used in the manufacture 
of soap powders, oilcloth, rubber substitutes, insulat- 
ing material, etc. 

Surely, if necessary, we can do without laundry 
lump starch, corn soap, and lollypops, in order to 
add to our food supply the 50,000,000 bushels of 
corn w 7 hich annually go into the production of these 
luxuries. 

In the production of grain alcohol, whiskey, and 
beer from corn grits and glucose another batch of 
50,000,000 bushels of corn can be saved for food 
purposes, thus yielding from these two sources alone 
100,000,000 bushels of fifty-seven pounds each. 

In the manufacture of degerminated cornmeal we 
lose 25 per cent, of the protein, 23 per cent, of the 
fat, and 60 per cent, of the mineral salts of the whole 



THIRTY CENT BREAD 27 

grain. All the cornmeal of the market place — the 
only cornmeal obtainable in the grocery store, is de- 
germinated, bolted, refined. 

Like whole wheat, whole corn has a fibrous outer 
skin, beneath which is a layer rich in protein, phos- 
phorus, iron and lime compounds. This is called by 
Professor Sherman of Columbia University the 
"gluten layers/' Within these layers lies the germ, 
constituting nearly 10 per cent, of the entire weight 
of the grain. In the production of hominy, corn- 
meal, grits, corn flakes and pancake flour the germ is 
discarded. 

"In view of the high food value of the germ," says 
Sherman, "and the fact that it constitutes about one- 
tenth of the entire grain, it seems unfortunate that 
it enters so little into human consumption." 

§ 9 — EAT THE GERM 

The reports of the United States Public Health 
Service show that there are important health reasons 
behind the proposition that the germ of the corn 
should enter into human consumption. 

Every year we convert into corn meal in the mill- 
ing establishments of the United States an average 
of 210,000,000 bushels of corn, in the refinement of 
which one-fifth, or 42,000,000 bushels, of the most 
indispensable parts of the kernel are lost. These 
rejected substances are sold for cattle food. 

The Department of Agriculture at Washington 
informs us that of the total corn crop from 85 to 90 
per cent, is fed to animals on the farms and only 
10 to 15 per cent, reaches the human family. 

Ten per cent, of a 3,000,000,000 bushel crop would 



28 THIRTY CENT BREAD 

be 300,000,000 bushels, a quantity which checks up 
almost to the bushel with the curious and unprofit- 
able uses to which we see our corn products are put. 

In times of stress we can easily rearrange the 
schedule, and instead of wasting the vast quantities 
now employed for purely technical purposes we can 
add to our food supply not only the sixty pounds 
per head as computed above, but also the tremendous 
saving of 42,000,000 bushels which would automat- 
ically follow our use of old-fashioned southern 
water-ground whole meal as a substitute for the de- 
germinated, highly milled product now on the 
market. 

Forty-two million bushels at nearly sixty pounds 
each weigh roughly 2,520,000,000 pounds, which 
would give us annually an additional twenty-five 
pounds each, or eighty-five pounds in all. 

Eighty-five pounds of whole cornmeal will make 
170 pounds of whole corn bread, whole corn muffins, 
whole corn dodgers, whole corn pones, whole corn 
johnny cake, or three and a quarter pounds per week 
per man. 

This quantity of corn bread, added to the eight 
pounds of whole wheat bread, which we can also 
save by changing our milling system, gives us more 
than a pound and a half of bread daily for every 
man, woman and child in the land. 

And what bread it would be ! Not the broken stafif 
of life upon which we now lean, but a beautiful, 
golden-brown compound containing every element 
essential to the maintenance of perfect health, 
strength and life. 

When confronted with the necessity of saving 
foodstuffs heretofore wasted or put to bad uses we 



THIRTY CENT BREAD 29 

find so much prodigality and so much stupidity that 
the very urgency of reform should inspire a force 
big enough to make us see at last, even through the 
eyes of fear and famine, the folly of our present 
ways. 

§ 10 — dry milk 

We are now wasting 5,000,000,000 pounds of an- 
other perfect foodstuff every year. 

In the centralizing plants and co-operative cream- 
eries of the United States we produce annually more 
than 1,500,000,000 pounds of butter. 

The butter or cream, shipped by rail to the cen- 
tralizing plant or lugged on a wagon to the wayside 
creamery, is separated back on the farm or in one 
of the skimming stations which in recent years have 
grown up in butter-producing centers. 

The cream is poured into cans for delivery to 
the buttermaker and the skim-milk is disposed of in 
one of three ways. It goes to the farmers' hogs, be- 
comes commercial casein, or is dumped. 

The skim-milk tank of the average skimming sta- 
tion is a thing horrible enough. It stands outside 
of the station on a platform uncovered, full of flies 
and other forms of dirt. 

The farmer drives up to the edge of the platform, 
dips from the tank what belongs to him, pours it into 
cans and goes back to his farm. He does not know 
the priceless character of the degraded and so-called 
worthless by-product which he treats as "slops" for 
feeding hogs. 

The production of 1,500,000,000 pounds of butter 
necessitates the production of 45,000,000,000 pounds 
of milk. The exact figures for last year, 1916, were 



30 THIRTY CENT BREAD 

45>°49>9 02 >°33 pounds. This does not include the 
milk delivered in bottles or cans for home consump- 
tion in the cities or the milk delivered to the cheese 
factory. It represents the milk in which last year's 
production of butter, 1,621,796,475 pounds, origi- 
nated. 

This quantity of butter represented 3.6 per cent, 
of the total quantity of milk produced. The total 
solids of such milk, less the butter fat, amounted to 
9.1 per cent., or 4,099,541,038 pounds of one of the 
best, although little utilized, foods known to man. 

§ II CONVERTED SU)PS 

If this food were handled in a clean, decent man- 
ner and treated as it is treated in France, every 
pound of it with its precious load of proteins, caseins, 
sugars and mineral salts could be converted for 
human consumption. 

Following the outbreak of the war, the French 
government forbade the exportation from France of 
this food, which by the French is called mammala. 
Thousands of physicians in the United States had 
learned the uses of mammala as an infant food, and 
were prescribing the French product in their ordi- 
nary practice. 

An American living in Paris, James R. Hatmaker, 
at once came to the United States and established a 
mammala factory at Knoxville, Pa., for the pur- 
pose of supplying the American trade with the 
product, which could no longer be obtained from 
France. 

I know the character of mammala, for I have 
used it for a year in my own household, not only 



THIRTY CENT BREAD 31 

as an infant food, but in the hundred and one 
ways in which it can be prepared for the family 
table. 

The value of mammala has been established by 
the Paris Academy of Medicine as well as by the 
Congress Hippique (the French association of horse 
breeders). 

This association has proved that a colt fed upon 
mammala attains its full development much earlier 
than a colt fed in any other way, and that by its use 
a horse with a physical development of a "three 
year old" can be produced in two years. 

§ 12 — AZOT, THE HORSE 

Azot, a colt twenty-six days old, was put on a diet 
of mammala. It gained two and a half pounds daily, 
weighing at the end of one year 752 pounds. The 
Congress Hippique pronounced its development a 
full year in advance of colts fed in the ordinary way. 
It was exceedingly strong, well-muscled, and had a 
much smaller abdomen than colts one year old, fed 
as colts are usually fed. 

The feeding with mammala was continued. The 
young horse never consumed a particle of grain. It 
reached its full maximum weight in the unprece- 
dented time of eighteen months and ten days, weigh- 
ing 1,012 pounds. 

Its performance in the Grand Prix of Brussels, 
the French Derby, the English Derby, the French 
Grand Prix, and the English St. Leger astonished 
the scientific men who were interested in its remark- 
able development and extraordinary stamina. It 
did not have the breeding for sensational speed, but 



32 THIRTY CENT BREAD 

its feats of endurance were sensational in the 
extreme. 

The theory that a food which can nourish a race 
horse can also nourish a man has been, through the 
career of Azot, elevated to the dignity of a demon- 
strated fact. The milk-fed horse of France now asks 
America to heed the lesson which it teaches for the 
benefit of all humanity. 

Mammala is a dry, white powder which keeps for 
several months at a low temperature. It can be re- 
constructed to the consistency of milk by adding the 
water that has been taken away in its preparation, 
or it can be used as a powder in the production of 
bread, cakes, puddings, soups, sauces, custards, ice 
cream and vegetable dishes. 

As it does not spoil on the way and requires no 
ice or refrigerator cars it can be shipped in large 
quantities by freight instead of by express, with the 
further advantage that as it contains no water there 
is only one-eighth as much weight on which to pay 
transportation charges as there would be were it 
shipped as fluid milk. Furthermore, there are no 
cans or containers to be shipped back to the dairy 
and no souring on the way. 

It does not have to be consumed within twenty- 
four hours, but can be held twenty-four weeks or 
until needed. 

If the United States government interested itself 
in multiplying the unique station at Knoxville, Pa., 
a thousand times through the butter producing sec- 
tions of Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Illinois, we 
could have at the end of one year nearly 5,000,000,- 
000 pounds of a perfect food now wasted. 

This enormous quantity of dry, solid milk would 



THIRTY CENT BREAD 33 

not be cheese, nor would it be anything like cheese. 
Cheese loses in the process of manufacture all the 
soluble salts which are discarded in the whey. Upon 
a diet of cheese, even though it were reconstructed 
to the fluid state, infants or children could not live 
by reason of the withdrawal of these salts. 

Mammala contains every blessed element natural 
to milk. In addition to this, the simple process em- 
ployed in its manufacture instantly destroys every 
disease-producing organism which may be contained 
in the raw milk. 

The milk slops now squandered annually would, if 
decently handled and converted into mammala, have 
a value of at least 25 cents a pound, or $1,250,000,- 
000, an amount quite sufficient to equip us with the 
largest navy in the world. 

Are we staggered by the w r onders of our neglected 
food problem? If not, we should be. 

§ 13 — POTATOES 

In estimating the quantity of food which can be 
rescued from the waste pots of the United States 
by a policy of reconstruction and conservation in- 
spired by war, we strike a single detail which two 
and a half years ago seemed to astonish the world. 

At that time messages smuggled out of Germany 
acquainted us with the fact that Germany's war 
bread was made of a combination of 85 per cent, 
whole meal (wheat, barley or rye) and 15 per cent, 
whole potatoes, skins and all. 

That the food value of the potato skin should be 
recognized by the Germans is not remarkable, for 
the reason that in the treatment of rheumatism, 



34 THIRTY CENT BREAD 

eczema, uric acid conditions, and many blood dis- 
orders the Germans have been among the very first 
to recognize and prescribe the virtues of alkaline 
waters. 

Mineral springs have been transferred in bottles 
from Germany all over the world, only for the reason 
that in the treatment of many diseases due to the 
consumption of too much food of the wrong kind, 
or not enough food of the right kind, alkaline waters 
have demonstrated considerable virtue. 

The Germans know that the outer layers of the 
potato contain alkaline solubles of great value, and 
that during times of easy prosperity and thoughtless 
luxury these alkalines are squandered by a system 
of preparing the raw potato which robs it, through 
the thick peels removed prior to boiling or frying, 
of 25 per cent, of its gross \veight. 

Germany's war bread immediately increased the 
supply of available potatoes 25 per cent, by putting 
an end to the 25 per cent, waste. 

In the United States we produce annually nearly 
400,000,000 bushels of potatoes. The German sys- 
tem of utilizing the whole potato, if applied to the 
United States, would save from the garbage can 
nearly 100,000,000 bushels of potatoes annually, or 
one bushel for every man, woman and child in the 
country. 

Thousands of American citizens are already ac- 
quainted with the virtues of the baked potato jacket. 
When steamed in a double boiler the thin outer skin 
falls away from the cooked tuber, with none of the 
best parts of the potato adhering. 

Baking and steaming, as far as potatoes are con- 
cerned, recommend themselves to war's attention. 



THIRTY CENT BREAD 35 

§ 14— BARLSY, RY£, RICS 

Of barley we produce annually nearly 200,000,000 
bushels. This at once goes through the pearling or 
refining process, which gives us our "pearled" barley 
or denatured barley of the market place and robs 
us of 20 per cent, or 20,000,000 bushels. 

If one should say that this is not so, for the reason 
that a large quantity of our barley crop is malted 
for brewing purposes, the situation only becomes 
worse and the loss, as far as human food is con- 
cerned, is not only doubled but trebled. 

We would have annually at least twenty-five 
pounds of barley for every man, woman and child 
more than we already have if we reformed our bar- 
ley milling system. 

Of rye we produce annually 40,000,000 bushels, 
most of which goes into whiskey. If we do to 
whiskey in war time what the Russians did to vodka 
we will save for every man, woman and child an- 
other unit of twenty-five pounds of one of the best 
bread grains that ever came from the shell. 

We really know nothing of rye bread in the United 
States. The silly, anaemic thing that is sold in our 
bakeshops as rye bread is not rye at all. It consists 
of 90 per cent, patent flour and 10 per cent, rye flour. 
With the characteristic flavor and virtue of neither 
wheat nor rye to recommend it, it is not wonderful 
that its colorless personality appeals to no one. 

Of rice we produce, approximately, 30,000,000 
bushels, a large part of which finds its way into beer. 
All the rest is polished. By consuming natural 
brown rice we save 20 per cent, of the grain, includ- 
ing its most indispensable elements. This saving 



36 THIRTY CENT BREAD 

represents 6,000,000 bushels, or four pounds per 
person. 

§ 15 — SAVED 

Leaving oats and all other foods out of consid- 
eration, we find that the economy system now prac- 
tised in France and Germany would yield for every 
man, woman and child in America over and above 
the food we already have : 

196 pounds whole wheat meal 
85 pounds whole cornmeal 
45 pounds mammala 
60 pounds potatoes 
25 pounds unpearled barley 
25 pounds whole rye 
4 pounds natural brown rice 
Total, 440 pounds. 

Let us examine the meaning of these figures. 
Modern dietitians tell us that the adult needs ap- 
proximately 3,000 food calories a day. The caloric 
value of the saved foods enumerated above, esti- 
mated in pounds, is — whole wheat meal, 1,628; whole 
cornmeal, 1,620; mammala, 3,680; potatoes, 378; un- 
pearled barley, 1,603; whole rye meal, 1,626; nat- 
ural brown rice, 1,600. 

If you will take paper and pencil and figure the 
caloric value of the 440 pounds of whole unprocessed 
foods tabulated above you will find that they will 
yield 721,988 calories. This amount, not taking into 
consideration the fact that infants and children re- 
quire much less, will supply all the needs of 100,- 
000,000 adults for 240 2-3 days. 

If we take into consideration the fact that a large 



THIRTY CENT BREAD 37 

proportion of the population of the United States 
consists of old people and very young people whose 
caloric requirements range from 500 to 2,000 a day, 
it can be readily seen that the saving of the seven 
foods enumerated will yield exactly enough, even 
though all other foods had no existence, to nourish 
the entire population of the United States for an 
entire year. 

It will be seen also that the foods considered here 
are complete and adequate foods containing every 
element necessary to the maintenance of life and 
health. 

This means that the food resources of the United 
States are simply prodigious. If the waste by-prod- 
ucts of seven foods of the hundred available are 
alone sufficient to support our national life, what is 
there to justify alarm? Food famine nor any of 
the hideous consequences that lift up their heads 
from such a nightmare will be impossible if we act ! 

The trouble is that we do not know the United 
States, and doubtless never will until the considera- 
tion of serious things such as war makes us look 
within. 

§ l6 — FOOD FOR ANIMALS 

"What will we do for milk, bacon, eggs, and pork 
if we turn all our wheat into whole wheat flour?'' 
asks a critic. "Our live stock industry depends upon 
the ability of the farmer to obtain from the wheat 
mills the bran, the red dog, the germ, and other by- 
products discarded in the manufacture of white 
flour," he adds. 

"If the United States should adopt the methods 
of Germany and France in milling nothing but the 



38 THIRTY CENT BREAD 

whole grain the disappearance of these by-products 
from the farm where they are used in feeding cattle, 
poultry, hogs, etc., would cause such a scarcity of 
milk, bacon, eggs, and pork/' he continues, "that 
only a wealthy few could pay the price to which they 
would skyrocket. How would we feed our pigs and 
our dairy cows if we ate whole wheat bread in the 
United States?" 

This critic, whose objections are based upon sin- 
cere anxiety, is totally ignorant of the food situation. 
Apparently he knows nothing about the 2,000,000,- 
000 bushels of whole corn which is set aside annually 
in the United States for cattle food, hog food and 
chicken food. 

Apparently he knows nothing of the flaxseed crop 
(14,000,000 bushels), the hay crop (85,000,000 
tons), the oat crop (1,229,182,000 bushels), or the 
peanut crop (20,000,000 bushels). 

Corn, flaxseed, hay, oats and peanuts are among 
the most important feeding stuffs now utilized on the 
farm. 

In addition to these foods we have 100,000,000 
acres under grass for grazing purposes, and 240,- 
000,000 additional acres that could be utilized. 

We produce millions of tons of cottonseed meal, 
cottonseed feeds, linseed meal, pea meal, bean meal, 
cocoanut meal, sugar feeds, rice meal, dried beet 
pulp, dried molasses beet pulp, corn stover, corn cob, 
soya bean meal, and the other concentrated commer- 
cial feeding stuffs, which are used in such enormous 
quantities in nourishing our milk cows, horses, chick- 
ens, and pigs for the production of milk, steaks, 
roasts, chops, ham, bacon and eggs. 

Apparently our critic does not know that if cows, 



THIRTY CENT BREAD 39 

hogs and chickens were never to obtain an ounce of 
wheat bran, red dog, wheat germ, middlings, or any 
other of the discarded by-products of our patent 
flour industry they would go on eating just the same 
from the superabundance of feeding stuffs classified 
above. 

Radical reform, urged by necessity, in our present 
system of refining wheat for human consumption 
would not affect in the slightest degree any of these 
foods now so extensively used by the live stock in- 
dustry of the United States. 

The quantity of feeding stuffs now produced by 
the flour mills from bran, red dog, germ, and 
middlings in the refinement of 750,000,000 bush- 
els of wheat is exactly 8,100,000 tons, or less 
than 10 per cent, of the weight of the hay crop 
alone. 

The total savings which a reform system of wheat 
milling would transfer from the food of cattle to the 
food of men, women and children in the production 
of whole meal bread amounts to less than 1 per cent, 
of the total food now available for our animal indus- 
try in the United States. 

The Geneva Experiment Station has given us the 
analyses of hundreds of cow foods, hog* foods, and 
chicken foods which contain not one particle of 
wheat bran, red dog, germ, or middlings. 

With farina, a pure white by-product of the pat- 
ent flour mill, which will not support life, selling in 
fancy packages throughout the United States at 10 
cents a pound, or $19.60 a barrel, while whole wheat 
meal, which will support life, is quoted at $7.50 a 
barrel, only to go begging among the ignorant, it is 
high time that the plain people should be warned of 



4 o THIRTY CENT BREAD 

what is in store for them unless they abandon their 
foolish food luxuries and go back to first principles. 



§ 17 — HURRYING THE END 

Already Argentine has placed an embargo on her 
exports of wheat and wheat flour. With a short 
crop at home, the Argentine government has found 
it necessary by this act to provide against the 
future. 

This simply means that the world's supply of 
wheat has already been reduced and that there will 
be a greater demand than ever upon the wheat crop 
of the United States, with not one chance in one 
thousand of a decrease in prices. 

No good can come of burying our heads in the 
sand. We know that there is a shortage of crops 
all over the world. 

We know that millions of men have been taken 
out of our productive industries to toil only in the 
interests of destruction. 

We know that hundreds of thousands of men who 
might be on the farms are in the factories. 

We know that the extortions of food gamblers 
and price boosters are still at work. 

The immediate remedy for the evils which this 
conspiracy of fate, ignorance, selfishness, and in- 
trigue has brought about lies in our return to first 
principles — the first of which is the elimination of 
waste. 

§ l8 — FRUITS AND VEGETABLES 

For the last ten years there have been available 
in the United States a number of drying processes 



THIRTY CENT BREAD 41 

for the conservation of fruits and vegetables. These 
processes, filled with promise of economic revolution, 
have not only been neglected, but to the shame of a 
few privileged persons in high places they have 
been discouraged. 

This oppression, applied by red tape, has not only 
cost the farmers of the United States millions of 
dollars but it has robbed the army, the navy and the 
civilian population of thousands of tons of food- 
stuffs, the possession of which at this hour would 
provide that vast reserve of power the insistent need 
of which we already keenly feel. 

Had the dehydrating processes of the United 
States, which have improved a hundredfold upon 
the processes which have contributed so much to 
Germany's physical necessity, been permitted to 
flourish as they should have been, our present state 
of unpreparedness, as far as food is concerned, 
would not now occasion such bitter anxiety. 

Before the outbreak of hostilities 425 drying es- 
tablishments were operating in Germany. During 
the last three years the German authorities have 
placed additional establishments in every agricul- 
tural zone of the country to take care of the slightest 
temporary surplus of farm products, thus preserv- 
ing for the days of shortage fruits and vegetables 
which in the United States are allowed to go to 
waste. 

There are only four of these establishments in the 
United States and their products, although received 
with tremendous enthusiasm by the army and navy, 
have been, for some strange reason which a Con- 
gressional inquiry may disclose, stricken from the 
list of army and navy supplies. 



42 THIRTY CENT BREAD 

This fact stands directly behind our inability dur- 
ing the past three years to supply the fighting nations 
of Europe with what they wanted and needed to 
their own benefit and to the benefit of our own agri- 
cultural interests. 

It is not too late to institute at once a policy of 
co-operation which will at least to some small extent 
repair the damage already done and to a far-reach- 
ing extent provide against the needs of the future. 

§ 19 ARMY AND NAVY 

A comparison of the army food supply of Ger- 
many and Austria (the food supply of France is 
similar) with the rations of the United States army 
emphasizes the importance of the dehydrating indus- 
try which in Germany has been encouraged to such 
an enormous extent and which in America has been 
curiously and strangely repressed. 

The ration for daily distribution in the German 
army consists of: 

war bread (whole meal) 750 grams 

fresh meat 375 grams 

dehydrated vegetables 250 grams 

sugar 17 grams 

wine and beer when possible. 

The rations of the Austrian army consist of: 

war bread (whole meal) 700 grams 

fresh meat 400 grams 

dehydrated vegetables . 140 grams 

fat 20 grams 

coffee 4 grams 



THIRTY CENT BREAD 43 

sugar 46 grams 

wine 200 c.c. 

(a half pint). 

In Germany the dehydrated vegetables are called 
"herbswuerst." Herbswuerst consists of a mixture 
of dehydrated soup greens, dehydrated onions, de- 
hydrated carrots, dehydrated potatoes, dehydrated 
cabbage, dehydrated spinach and beans. 

The encouraged German processes, which are 
much inferior to the discouraged American proc- 
esses, consist in partly boiling the vegetables, thus 
losing a considerable proportion of their extractives 
and then in drying the products at a high tempera- 
ture. 

This treatment causes a radical change in the 
physical appearance and chemical properties of the 
dehydrated foodstuffs. To make them fit for the 
table they require recooking and while unquestion- 
ably nutritive and of great value in contributing 
vegetable alkalines to the diet of the soldiers, they 
are not over-palatable nor do their flavors closely 
resemble those of the fresh vegetables. 

§ 20 — BUTTER THAN GERMANY'S 

The American processes are superior to the Ger- 
man processes in that they do not boil the fruits and 
vegetables at all. They treat them at a much lower 
temperature in a manner which insures a thorough 
circulation of the air currents so as to reach every 
particle of the product undergoing dehydration. 

As a result the American process does not injure 
the cellular membranes of the vegetable matter and 



44 THIRTY CENT BREAD 

not an atom of the flavor, color or nutritive value 
of the product is lost. 

The A-merican products with which I have been 
intimately familiar for seven years retain a fulness 
of fresh flavor when prepared for the table, and 
because their cellular structure is uninjured in the 
process they acquire a normal appearance both as 
regards form and color after being allowed for a 
short time before cooking to reabsorb the water orig- 
inally taken from them. 

§ 21 — rot on the; ground 

The United States Department of Agriculture in- 
forms us that fully 50 per cent, of all the vegetables 
and fruits grown in America never reach the con- 
sumer. They rot on the ground. 

This tremendous loss is due to difficulties of trans- 
portation combined with the fact that only the fan- 
ciest quality of fruits and vegetables will pass final 
market inspection for profitable shipping and 
trading. 

The American dehydrating processes, if now en- 
couraged by the army and navy, instead of being 
suppressed by them, could conserve every particle 
of these waste products, contributing tremendously 
thereby to the wealth of the farm and adding thou- 
sands of tons of perfect foods to the nation's dietary. 

Moreover, through their use everything grown on 
the farm and in the orchard can be conserved so as 
to keep indefinitely. They can be marketed at a 
price well below that of the so-called fresh products 
which are to be had only at certain seasons of the 
year. 



THIRTY CENT BREAD 45 

To-day the farmer is hemmed in by local markets. 
To-morrow, if Congress acts in behalf of the dehy- 
drating industry, the farmers' products, when dried 
at nearby or conveniently located plants can be 
cheaply delivered to any point in Europe and 
America and just as cheaply stored for use until 
needed. 

A truck-load of vegetables and fruits after dehy- 
dration weighs but a hundred pounds and fills only 
a single barrel. 

On an order of 26,000,000 pounds of canned or 
fresh vegetables the United States army must pay 
transportation charges and the cost of labor in han- 
dling on 19,500,000 pounds of water. 

§ 22 — SHORTAGE OF TIN 

The price of tin to-day is so high and the cost of 
glass containers has advanced to such a degree that 
the manufacturers of canned goods are desperate. 

The American Can Company is taking care of 
its three-year contracts but is rejecting all overtures 
from the great mass of buyers of tin containers 
known as "shoppers." 

The dehydrated fruit and vegetable is independent 
of tins, cans or glass containers. Paraffined paper 
containers or paper-lined barrels are all these humble 
but priceless foods require. 

These are the reasons offered by the canned goods 
industry in explanation of the tremendous advance 
in the price of canned goods. 

This shortage in tin cans, plus the necessity of 
conserving foods now wasted and the vast savings 
made possible by packing, storing and shipping dry 



46 THIRTY CENT BREAD 

solids instead of water, should force the Federal 
Government to foster and encourage the use of dehy- 
drated vegetables and fruits. 

For large forces of men engaged in military oper- 
ations far from a base of supply as well as for naval 
use the dehydrating methods of preserving food- 
stuffs are indispensable. 

Because of their low moisture content dehydrated 
foods, which are not subject to attacks by molds or 
bacteria, will keep indefinitely. 

§ 23 — NO loss 

Experiments conducted by the Department of 
Agriculture at Washington have shown that there is 
a loss of 25 per cent, in the peeling and preparation 
of the potato alone, another loss of 15 per cent, by 
rotting before the supply is consumed, so that only 
60 per cent, of the fresh potatoes purchased ever 
reaches the table for consumption. 

In the dehydrated potato there is no loss from 
any source and the handling, transportation and 
storage of 80 per cent, of the water content in the 
fresh potato is avoided. 

So perfect is the flavor of the finished product 
that the largest manufacturer of pure fruit flavors 
in the United States uses the dehydrated raspberry 
in capturing its delicate and elusive fragrance for 
his product. 

These facts, the profit of the farm, the conserva- 
tion of enormous quantities of foods now going to 
waste, the easy handling, storage and shipping of 
foods needed all over the world, the preparation of 
concentrated rations indispensable to a large army 



THIRTY CENT BREAD 47 

and navy and the general excellence of the finished 
product rise to confront the whimsical and arbitrary 
red tape in army and navy which has not only re- 
sulted in the discouragement of the dehydrating 
industry but which makes us now unable to supply 
the nations of Europe with the product demanded 
by them. An accumulated reserve of these foods, 
held over from other years, could have been ready 
for use now. That it is not at hand only emphasizes 
the importance of acting at once. 

Behind these facts lies the 1914 report of the 
Quartermaster General, War Department, United 
States Army, in which appear these words: 

§ 24 — TH£ T£ST 

"After soaking and cooking the dehydrated vege- 
table closely resembles the fresh product and also 
as to taste and quality. This new form of treating 
vegetables makes them somewhat like the old desic- 
cated vegetables in use in the army in previous years 
but superior in quality and flavor. 

"During the years 1898 and 1899 the difficulties 
experienced in shipping fresh vegetables to the 
Philippines suggested the use of desiccated vege- 
tables, which at that time were extensively used by 
miners in Alaska and other remote mining regions. 

"Considerable quantities of desiccated potatoes 
and onions were purchased for the Philippines and 
on occasions were issued to the troops in lieu of the 
fresh articles. There was such a general prejudice 
against these vegetables that the Subsistence Depart- 
ment was left with a large stock on hand which 
eventually became a loss. The fresh vegetables are 



48 THIRTY CENT BREAD 

now dehydrated under a new and improved process 
and the quality has been improved. 

"Very satisfactory reports have been received 
from tests made with these vegetables at Washing- 
ton Barracks and at Galveston and Texas City." 

These facts are inexplicable when it is considered 
that the United States army, in spite of its own 
experience, refused to consider the new product in 
feeding the troops mobilized along the Mexican 
border in 1916. 

The report goes on as follows: 

"As one pound of dehydrated potatoes equals 
about 6y 2 pounds of the fresh and one pound of de- 
hydrated onions equals about 12^ pounds of the 
fresh the saving in transportation of these vege- 
tables for a large command would be enormous and 
it would appear desirable to adopt these vegetables 
for use in the field if it can be shown that they have 
sufficient merit to recommend themselves to the 
troops. 

"The dehydrated products consist of beans, car- 
rots, corn, onions, beets, potatoes, tomatoes, turnips, 
spinach, cabbage, etc. As potatoes and onions are 
the principal fresh vegetables used in the army it was 
considered advisable to make a practical trial of 
these new products with troops actually in the field, 
for these products would derive additional value as a 
food element in subsisting troops in case of war 
and when conditions were such that fresh or canned 
vegetables could not be supplied. 

"Therefore, 2,000 rations of potatoes and 5,000 
rations of onions were procured and forwarded to 
the Second Division for a thorough test in the field 
and by the troops." 



THIRTY CENT BREAD 49 

Unknown to the army dehydrated potatoes, 
onions, cabbage, apples, turnips, carrots, soup 
greens, cranberries, spinach, celery, rhubarb, blue- 
berries, tomatoes, garlic and parsley were used in 
19 1 3 and 1 9 14 on the battleships Utah, New Hamp- 
shire, Louisiana, Ohio, Florida, Hancock and 
Nebraska. 

They were also used at the Newport Training 
Station, in the Provision and Clothing Department, 
Brooklyn, and in the Philadelphia Navy Yard. 

The Depot Commissary of the Canal Zone Execu- 
tive Department reported to Governor George W. 
Goethals on the very excellent grade of soup ob- 
tained by him through the use of these vegetables. 
Goethals responded by approving the recommenda- 
tion and memorandum requisition of the Depot Com- 
missary for a supply to be shipped to the isthmus. 

Dr. Carl Alsberg, chief of the Bureau of Chem- 
istry, Department of Agriculture, says, "The sub- 
ject of drying of vegetables is in line with the pre- 
paredness propaganda." 

David Franklin Houston, Secretary of Agricul- 
ture, urges the conservation of food products by the 
farmers of the United States. 

The dehydrating establishments have offered to 
co-operate with the Washington authorities by plac- 
ing at the disposal of the government all their proc- 
esses and plants. 

T. J. Cowle, paymaster general, U. S. Navy, re- 
porting to the Navy Department on his tests with 
dehydrated fruits and vegetables, September 17, 
1913, says: 

'Teaches, raspberries, spinach, yellow turnips, 
carrots, soup vegetables (onions, parsley, cabbage, 



50 THIRTY CENT BREAD 

celery, etc.), sliced green string beans, tomatoes and 
rhubarb were submitted for test. Quantities of 
each of the above dehydrated products were placed 
in tepid water and allowed to soak. At the end of 
forty-five minutes they were found to be ready for 
cooking with the exception of the string beans and 
rhubarb which required one and one-half hours. 

§ 25 — CARROTS 

"The carrots after soaking were drained and 
cooked in boiling water to which a small amount of 
soda was added. At the end of thirty minutes they 
were completely cooked and of excellent flavor and 
appearance. The carrots are in sliced form and 
can be served as mashed vegetables or added to 
stews. 

§ 26 — TURNIPS 

"The turnips were cooked similarly to the carrots, 
forty-five minutes being required. They were read- 
ily mashed smooth and soft and were of good 
flavor. Like the carrots the turnips are in sliced 
form and may be used as a vegetable or in com- 
bination with other articles of food. 

§ 27 — SOUP VEGETABLES 

"It was found necessary to boil the soup vege- 
tables for an hour. One of the ingredients, string 
beans, was still tough and hard at the end of forty- 
five minutes. Very good results were obtained with 
the use of the soup vegetables but it is thought that 
they would give more satisfaction if the string beans 



THIRTY CENT BREAD 51 

were eliminated as the other ingredients became soft 
and ready for use sooner than the latter. 

§ 28 — spinach 

"The spinach was prepared in the same manner 
as the other vegetables. During the soaking process 
the odor of dry grass was noticeable. After twenty- 
five minutes' cooking the spinach was seasoned with 
butter, salt and pepper and found to be of very good 
flavor; the odor of dry grass had almost entirely 
disappeared. The spinach is in the form of whole 
leaves and so has the appearance of the fresh article 
when cooked. 

§ 29 — STRING BEANS 

"It was necessary to soak the string beans for an 
hour and a half before they became soft. They were 
soaked in boiling water with a little soda for an 
hour and a half and were then found to be very 
stringy and to have a flavor similar to that of 
canned beans. 

§ 30 — TOMATOES 

"The tomatoes were soaked in sufficient tepid 
water to just cover them for forty-five minutes, more 
water being added from time to time as it was ab- 
sorbed. They were then placed on a range in the 
same water and simmered until tender. After sea- 
soning with salt, pepper and butter the flavor was 
found to be excellent. The skins had not been re- 
moved before dehydration. This detracted both 
from the appearance of the tomatoes when cooked 
and from the pleasure of eating them. 



52 THIRTY CENT BREAD 

§ 31 RASPBERRIES 

"The raspberries after cooking were simmered in 
the same water. Sugar was added and after twenty- 
five minutes' cooking was complete. The raspber- 
ries were very tasty but not attractive in coloring, 
being a purplish-brown shade. 



§ 32 — PEACHES 

"The peaches were treated similarly to the rasp- 
berries except that forty-five minutes were required 
for soaking. Flavor and appearance were excel- 
lent. 

§ 33 — rhubarb 

"The rhubarb required an hour and a half to 
soak and was then cooked in boiling water for forty- 
five minutes, sugar being added from time to time. 
Very good flavor and appearance were obtained. 



§ 34 — RESULTS 

"The results, with the exception of the string 
beans, were most satisfactory. As was remarked 
in the report of a test of other dried vegetables pre- 
viously submitted these articles are a nearer ap- 
proach to the fresh than any other which have been 
tried at this station. In all cases, string beans in- 
cluded, they are as good as canned goods and of 
course require less storage room aboard ship." 

This remarkable report covered dehydrated fruits 
and vegetables as they were prepared four years ago. 



THIRTY CENT BREAD 53 

Good as they were then they have since been vastly 
improved. To-day the entire nation needs them. 

Contracts made between wholesale grocers and 
canned goods manufacturers indicate that the price 
of all canned goods, partly due to the increased 
prices of tin, will be 33 per cent, higher in 1917 than 
they were during the high priced year of 19 16. 

With such a report on hand as that submitted to 
the Navy Department, September 17, 1913, the ne- 
cessity of dehydrating and using the fruits and vege- 
tables that canners have never even attempted to 
pack becomes an imperative federal duty. 

In addition to the reports received from tests made 
with dehydrated fruits and vegetables at Galveston, 
Texas City, Washington Barracks, the Canal Zone, 
Philadelphia, Brooklyn and aboard seven U. S. bat- 
tleships, the commanding officer at the Naval Train- 
ing Station, Newport, R. L, reported, May 6, 1913, 
to the Bureau of Supplies and Accounts, Navy De- 
partment, regarding the tests made under his direc- 
tion on dehydrated fruits and vegetables. 

The report stated, "The articles tested were pota- 
toes, onions, cabbage and apples. 

§ 35 — POTATOES 

"The potatoes were in the form of crisp white 
chips which, when soaked in water, assumed the ap- 
pearance of sliced fresh potatoes. The best results 
were obtained by placing the potatoes in cold water 
in which a small amount of sodium bicarbonate had 
been dissolved, and immediately placing the whole 
on the fire where the potatoes were allowed to come 
to the boiling point slowly. The potatoes were then 



54 THIRTY CENT BREAD 

cooked thirty minutes from the time the boiling 
commenced. They were perfectly smooth and white 
when mashed and could not be distinguished from 
the fresh article. In flavor, although a slight dif- 
ference could be detected between this article and 
the fresh potato, it is the nearest approach to the 
fresh potato that has yet come under the notice of 
the commissary department of this station. 

§ 36 — ONIONS 

"The onions submitted were in the form of thin 
dried slices which easily crumbled between the fin- 
gers. The most satisfactory method of cooking was 
found to be soaking in cold water for a half hour and 
then placing on the fire to boil. For frying the best 
results were obtained by soaking in cold water for 
one hour and then draining and frying in a small 
quantity of fat. The results were most satisfactory, 
the onions having the appearance, odor and color 
similar to fresh article. 

§ 37 — cabbage 

"The cabbage submitted was in the form of dried 
leaves which crumbled easily. The leaves were 
soaked in cold water for one hour and then boiled 
with a small quantity of salt pork until tender, about 
one and one-half hours. The flavor was very good 
but the color brownish, due to the length of time 
consumed in cooking. A quantity of the dehydrated 
cabbage was again soaked and boiled as before. But 
this time a small quantity of sodium bicarbonate was 
used in the boiling. The result was noticeably bet- 



THIRTY CENT BREAD 55 

ter, the color being whiter and the flavor better. 
A third test was made by placing the cabbage in 
cold water in which a small quantity of sodium bi- 
carbonate had been dissolved and then allowing the 
whole to come slow T ly to the boiling point. A small 
piece of salt pork was added and the cabbage boiled 
for thirty minutes. The color was perfectly white 
and the flavor difficult to distinguish from that of 
fresh cabbage. 

§ 38 — APPLES 

"The apples were in the form of dried slices of 
cored and peeled apples but did not crumble easily 
when handled. They were soaked for thirty minutes 
and then cooked on the range in the same water. 
No trouble was experienced in cooking the apples 
soft enough and when made up in the form of sauce 
and pie the results were excellent, the color and 
flavor being superior to some fresh cooking 
apples." 

§ 39 — TH # BIG Reason 

The imperative necessity of adopting the dehy- 
drating processes in order to save for the food of 
army, navy and civilian population the hundreds of 
thousands of tons of fruits and vegetables which an- 
nually go to waste in the United States, is based upon 
the issues of public health as well as those of imme- 
diate economy. 

Fruits and vegetables are indispensable to man 
for the reason that they supply the needs of his body 
with alkaline salts in a form in which they can be 
utilized. To the absence of these alkaline salts many 
grave, physical disorders are traceable. 



S6 THIRTY CENT BREAD 

From the fruit and vegetable as well as from 
unbolted cereals we obtain iron, lime, potassium, 
magnesium, silicon, sodium, fluorine and iodine. 
Without these mineral salts no army can withstand 
the rigors of trench life and no civilian can escape 
anaemia, tuberculosis and the hundred other evils 
which follow in the wake of a restricted mineral diet 
with its accompanying loss of vitality and feeble 
resistance to disease. 

The last word on this subject, which should go 
straight home to every department of our national 
government interested in the production and distri- 
bution of foodstuffs, comes through E. B. Forbes, 
chief of the laboratory of the Agricultural Experi- 
ment Station at Wooster, Ohio. 

§ 40 — SCIENCE 

Forbes enumerates the functions of the mineral 
salts in animal nutrition as follows: 

"As bearers of electricity the mineral elements 
dominate the whole course of metabolism. 

"They conduct nerve stimuli, and play a leading 
role in the general process of cell stimulation. 

"They govern the contraction of the muscles, in- 
cluding those of the heart. 

"They compose the central agency for the main- 
tenance of neutrality in the blood. 

"They enter into the composition of every living 
cell. 

"They compose supporting structures. 

"They assist in the co-ordination of the digestive 
processes. 

"They activate enzymes, and through their con- 



THIRTY CENT BREAD 57 

trol of the chemical reaction of the blood and tissues 
they govern enzyme action. 

"They unite with injurious products of metabo- 
lism, and render them harmless or useful. 

"As catalyzers they alter the speed of reactions, 
and the rate of metabolism generally, as measured 
by oxygen consumption. 

"Through their effects on surface tension they 
participate in the mechanism of cell movement. 

"Through their control of the imbibition of water 
by the colloids they govern absorption and secretion. 

"Through their control of the affinity of the blood 
for gases they govern respiration. 

"Finally, they control the state of solution, precipi- 
tation, mechanical aggregation, chemical association 
and ionization of the colloids which compose living 
tissue. 

"These then are some of the functions of the 
mineral elements. Considering their nature and 
importance, it is at once obvious that life could not 
endure if its complex mineral requirements were 
not automatically and constantly maintained in 
almost perfect adjustment. 

"What then are the facts which warrant the prac- 
tical consideration of this subject? 

"They are that in pathological states these func- 
tions are somewhat deranged, and that life as we 
live it is in many respects highly abnormal, in the 
sense of differing from that to which human metabo- 
lism is attuned; and with our ever-increasing social 
differentiation life puts increasing stress upon the 
integrity of the body and its normal processes. 

"In relation to food materials there are also im- 
portant facts bearing on this matter of the mineral 



58 THIRTY CENT BREAD 

nutrients, for while highly developed processes of 
food manufacture and efficient world-wide trans- 
portation give us the greatest opportunities for cor- 
rect dietetics that there has ever been, these same 
agencies open the way to greater unwisdom and 
abuse in dietetics than have been possible in our 
more primitive days. The net result is an obligation 
on our part to prepare a defence of knowledge 
against the misfortunes of prosperity. 

"Calcium, phosphorus and iron are more likely 
than other mineral nutrients to be lacking in human 
dietaries. On this account especial interest attaches 
to their occurrence in food. Calcium is especially 
abundant in milk, and is also contained in consider- 
able quantities in eggs, vegetables and fruits. 

"Phosphorus is abundant in milk, eggs, nuts, peas, 
beans and such cereal products as contain the outer 
seed coats (germ and bran). 

"Iron is found in largest quantities in beef, eggs, 
beans, peas, green vegetables (especially spinach) 
and in the outer seed coats of the cereals (germ and 
bran). 

"The foods which are poorest in minerals are pol- 
ished rice, pearl hominy, white flour, bolted corn- 
meal and other cereal foods which lack the outer 
seed coats. 

"These foods, because of their highly digestible 
character and lack of salts, are apt to be constipat- 
ing. Magnesium is abundant in the cereals and is 
not apt to be deficient in normal rations. The mag- 
nesium salts of the outer seed coats of cereals con- 
tribute a laxative character to foods containing 
them. 

"Potassium is found in considerable quantities in 



THIRTY CENT BREAD 59 

fruits and vegetables. Manganese, boron, silicon 
and iodine are also found in fruits and vegetables. 

"Generally speaking a high mineral content of the 
food is desirable since the organism is much better 
able to handle an excess of mineral constituents than 
to meet a deficiency. 

"It is a good practice, therefore, to utilize the 
water in which foods are cooked since the cooking 
water dissolves out much mineral matter. 

"An abundance of mineral salts in the diet is also 
desirable aside from nutritive considerations because 
they contribute a laxative character to the food. 
Foods which are deficient in minerals are apt to be 
constipating. 

"Vegetables, milk and fruits contain alkaline salts. 
The latter group should be liberally represented in 
the diet. 

"The control features of improperly chosen diets 
are usually an undue dependence upon meats and 
foods made from finely milled cereals or other cereal 
foods lacking the outer seed coats (bran and germ) 
and too little use of milk and vegetables." 

These comments of Forbes are sufficient in them- 
selves, even though they stood alone (they do not 
stand alone) to command the consideration of Con- 
gress to the effect that the dehydrating industry may 
immediately be put to work for the purpose of add- 
ing all the fruits and vegetables now wasted, with 
all their precious freight of alkaline salts, to the 
diet of America and America's allies. 



60 THIRTY CENT BREAD 

§ 41 WOMEN AND CHILDREN 

In addition to the comments of E. B. Forbes, chief 
of the Agricultural Experiment Station, Wooster, 
Ohio, upon the importance of the alkaline mineral 
salts of fruits and vegetables to the diet of soldier, 
sailor and civilian, he contributes to the philosophy 
of nutrition other elements of scientific value 
which apply particularly to women, children and in- 
fants. 

Certainly the health of women, children and in- 
fants during times of war is of importance equal 
with the health of soldiers, sailors, factory workers 
and farmers. 

He says, "It is during rapid growth and during 
the reproductive life of women that the mineral salts 
are especially in demand and it is at these times that 
lack of mineral salts causes or aggravates a number 
of well-known pathological conditions. 

§ 42 — th£ baby 

"The normal food of the human infant naturally 
furnishes its full mineral requirement. This subject 
becomes of interest in this connection, therefore, in 
cases of artificial feeding and in certain metabolic 
derangements. 

"For an artificial food we naturally turn first to 
cow's milk which because of high fat and casein con- 
tent must be liberally diluted. If water is used, the 
necessary dilution reduces the minerals, the albumen, 
the lecithin and the so-called accessory nutrients to 
an undesirable extent. 

"The best diluent is whey, which any one can pre- 



THIRTY CENT BREAD 61 

pare with the aid of a thermometer and a commer- 
cial rennet preparation in a few minutes. (The 
whey must be heated to 68 degrees C. or 154 degrees 
Fahrenheit to kill the enzyme, before it is mixed 
with milk). 

"With combinations of whey, skim milk, cream 
and milk sugar you can play any dietetic tune you 
please on the infant organism, and with these foods 
the intelligent parent can rear any infant which can 
live at all. The especial usefulness of whey is due 
to its abundant mineral content in natural physio- 
logical solution. It serves as a stabilizer — a cor- 
rective. 

"You can do no harm with whey unless you use 
the evaporated preparation, whey powder. It is pos- 
sible by an abuse of this food to cause edema (in 
weak infants) through excessive ingestion of min- 
erals, though this would never occur in its proper 
use. 

"The commonest metabolic disturbance in infants 
is gastro-intestinal indigestion. Its commonest cause 
is a weak digestive apparatus and too much fat in 
the food. Alkali soaps, formed in the intestine, in- 
stead of being digested and absorbed are passed off 
in the feces. 

"Alkalis are lost to the organism; mineral acids 
are left to predominate; infantile acidosis ensues. 

"Because of its low oxidative capacity the infant 
organism is especially subject to acid intoxication 
from relatively slight causes, the acid excess being 
due to the normal acid products of metabolism and 
to imperfectly oxidized organic compounds, espe- 
cially betaoxybutyric acid. We have mentioned the 
weak digestive apparatus and deficient capacity to 



62 THIRTY CENT BREAD 

handle fat. Inanition also causes acidosis in infants. 
Fever is a very common cause. 

"In all these cases whey is especially valuable. 
Many a child has been taken through long sieges of 
fever on whey. Children do not lose weight rapidly 
on whey alone. fLgg white and fruit juices, espe- 
cially that of the orange, may be used with whey to 
advantage ; they furnish some nutriment and appre- 
ciable amounts of alkali. 

"The infant is born with a store of iron within 
its body. During the nursing period this store is 
gradually depleted, since the milk contains little 
iron. 

"At weaning time the infant stands in need of 
iron. This is usually supplied in egg yolk, prunes, 
whole wheat foods and oatmeal, and some physicians 
of unquestioned standing recommend spinach. I 
happen never to have seen spinach used, however, 
for an infant. 

"Egg yolk is of especial value as a source of iron, 
calcium, phosphorus and lecithin. But it is an ex- 
ceedingly rich food. It must be fed with great care 
on two accounts, first, to avoid making the baby 
sick, because, while it is usually well taken, it acts 
like poison to some infants, and second, because the 
value of egg is so great that it is especially unfor- 
tunate if you upset the infant by an over-allowance, 
since it may be a long time before it will regain its 
tolerance for this food. 

"The existence in infants and older children of 
simple malnutrition of the bones, a common malady 
in young farm animals, is not well established; and 
the prevalent imperfections of children's teeth are 
due to the fine milling of our cereals and the increas- 



THIRTY CENT BREAD 63 

ing use of sugar (a readily fermentable, acid-pro- 
ducing food)/' 

These comments of Forbes are supported by nu- 
merous other authorities, many of whom are to be 
found in the Public Health Service of the United 
States Government. 

To repeat, "A high mineral content of the food 
is desirable since the organism is much better able 
to handle an excess of mineral salts than to meet a 
deficiency/' 

Our white breadstufifs, bolted corn, pearled barley, 
polished rice, the breakfast foods made of highly 
milled grains like farina, cream of wheat, corn 
flakes, pancake flour, pies, biscuits, crackers, crullers, 
doughnuts, muffins, cakes, corn starch puddings, re- 
fined sugar sweeteners, table syrups, vegetables 
served apart from the water in which they are cooked 
and meats are all deficient, in alkaline salts. Whole 
meal bread, vegetables and fruits, whether fresh or 
dehydrated, dry milk powder or fresh milk supply an 
abundance of alkaline mineral salts. 

Now is the time for the government to act upon 
these truths. Preparedness means more than the 
equipment of army and navy, the manufacture of 
rifles, guns and ammunition. It means first of all 
the stamina of the nation. The stamina of the na- 
tion rests upon adequate food and plenty of it. 

The United States yields an abundance of such 
food and private industries, however powerful, 
should not be permitted to destroy its value, however 
great may be the individual profit which accrues at 
the expense of the nation. 



64 THIRTY CENT BREAD 

§ 43 — the; soup kstti^ 

The soup kettle must be put back on the kitchen 
stove on which, in America, it has not stood for 
years. Into that soup kettle should be placed every 
bone and every scrap of meat not actually consumed 
at the table. 

Such foods as now find their way into the garbage 
pail, only for the reason that we have become accus- 
tomed to disposing of them in that manner, should 
now be consigned to the soup kettle. 

Celery tops and the rough outside pieces, which 
as a rule are not placed in the celery dish carried to 
the table, should surrender their flavorful ex- 
tractives and benevolent mineral salts to the soup 
kettle. 

Beet tops, the outer leaves and core of cabbage, 
lettuce and all the other green things usually looked 
upon in the American kitchen as waste, should be 
utilized in the making of soup stock. 

The so-called inedible green tops of leeks and 
young onions and the tougher and more fibrous ends 
of asparagus should be used. 

After parting with their invaluable alkalines, ex- 
tracted from them in the soup kettle, the strainer 
may be used to remove such inedible pulp as is not 
desirable to serve at the dinner table. 

These clear vegetable juices, although their value 
is rarely suspected by the average housewife, are of 
great importance to the nutrition of the growing 
child. 

The soup bowl, neglected in the United States, 
has become a national institution in France and 
Germany. 



THIRTY CENT BREAD 65 

§ 44 KITCHEN WASTE 

When one passes through such American cities as 
Boston, New York, Chicago, St. Louis and San 
Francisco for the purpose of examining the charac- 
ter of the kitchen waste carted off daily to the gar- 
bage disposal plants, the evidence of our prodigality, 
which thus discloses itself, is sufficient to mark us 
as the most thriftless people in the world. 

A tour of inspection that covers the hotel kitchens 
of our big cities emphasizes the justice of this char- 
acterization. 

The janitor of every apartment house in the coun- 
try can testify that the American home, even in the 
tenement house sections of the more congested dis- 
tricts, has set itself up as a rival of the hotel chef in 
the matter of converting valuable food into garbage. 

In France even clean egg shells are used in soup 
making for the reason that they yield soluble cal- 
cium salts to the finished product. 

Clean potato skins are utilized in the same way for 
the reason that they yield soluble iron and potassium 
salts. 

Decayed and unclean particles of vegetable mat- 
ter must necessarily be sent to the garbage pail. 
But, material of such character is obviously not in- 
cluded in these suggestions. 

Soup made of clean vegetable waste can be de- 
scribed truthfully as the unpatented medicine of the 
kitchen stove. 

§ 45 — MINERAL FOOD 

Henry C. Sherman says, "In view of the fact that 
herbivorous animals, which are less liable to anemia 



66 THIRTY CENT BREAD 

than meat-eating animals, obtain their normal food 
iron entirely from vegetable sources there is every 
reason to suppose that man makes good use of the 
iron of the fruits and vegetables in his diet. 

"Moreover, since (as Herter has shown) anemic 
conditions and excessive intestinal putrefaction 
often go together, the bulkiness and laxative ten- 
dency of fruits and vegetables, along with their rela- 
tively high iron content, is advantageous in com- 
bating the conditions which give rise to excessive 
putrefaction and at the same time increasing the 
supply of iron/' 

Of course, one does not use fruits in the making 
of soup. But Sherman's wisdom, even in his refer- 
ence to fruits, is applicable to the soup kettle for the 
reason that fruits and vegetables are of value in the 
diet for reasons which are almost identical. 

Vegetable waste contributes not only just as much 
mineral matter to the diet as is found in the parts 
usually consumed, but in many instances it contrib- 
utes more. 

Quoting Von Noorden Sherman says, "The neces- 
sity of a generous supply of vegetables and fruits 
must be particularly emphasized. They are of the 
greatest importance for the normal development of 
the body and all its functions. If we limit the most 
important sources of iron — the vegetables and fruits 
— we cause a certain sluggishness of blood forma- 
tion and an entire lack of reserve iron such as is 
normally found in the liver, spleen and bone marrow 
of healthy, well-nourished individuals." 



THIRTY CENT BREAD 67 

§ 46 — MORS SOUP, LESS MEDICINE 

That this reserve iron need not be outside the 
reach of the average household, even during times 
of forced economy, is a well-established fact. 

The soup kettle is not noted by Sherman in his 
references to the experimental dietary study cop- 
ducted in New York City in which it was found that 
a free use of vegetables, whole wheat bread and 
cheaper sorts of fruits with milk, but without meat, 
resulted in a gain of 30 per cent, in the iron content 
of the diet while the protein value, fuel value and 
cost remained practically the same. 

But, it is certain that if the soup kettle had been 
put to work in these experimental dietary studies in 
order to utilize the vegetable waste of the household, 
it would have resulted in a gain of 50 per cent, in- 
stead of 30 per cent, of the iron content of the diet. 

Iron is but one of the normal ingredients of soup. 
Potassium, sodium, magnesium and calcium are 
among the other ingredients. 

Hundreds of patent medicines contain these iden- 
tical substances, plus alcohol. But, in the case of the 
patent medicine its mineral content, unlike that of 
soup, consists usually of salts which the human body 
cannot appropriate. In the case of soup these salts 
are present in a form in which they are utilized at 
once. 

More soup kettles mean fewer medicine bottles. 

§ 47 — EGGS 

The annual waste of eggs, revealed January 5, 
1914, by Dr. M. E. Pennington, chief of the food 



68 THIRTY CENT BREAD 

research laboratory of the Federal Department of 
Agriculture, becomes more threatening every day. 
As the practice of food economy becomes a stern 
necessity the tgg situation clamors for reform. 

The value of the eggs produced annually in the 
United States prior to 1917 is about $250,000,000. 
In 1917, as we shall see, the value of the eggs pro- 
duced will be somewhere between $400,000,000 and 
$500,000,000. 

Estimated on the figures of 1914, 1915, and 1916, 
eggs to the value of $50,000,000 are completely lost 
every year. This year the loss, unless checked 
through the appeal of Commissioner Houston to the 
farmers, will total $100,000,000 or more. 

Dr. Pennington declares that in addition to this 
complete loss there is another loss of 30 per cent, 
due to deterioration in handling. 

Dr. Pennington admits that her estimate of this 
loss is possibly a little too conservative, the trade 
people putting it much higher. The Chicago packers 
admit it is three times higher, or ordinarily $150,- 
000,000 annually. 

In April eggs start on their way from the farm to 
the icehouse subject to all the vicissitudes of our 
present imperfect system of distribution. 

§ 48 — AVOWED TO spoii, 

The farmer collects from his nests every day for 
a period of perhaps a week or two weeks. When 
he has gathered sufficient eggs to make a shipment 
he forwards the product to the assembler, who gath- 
ers eggs from many other farmers. When the 
assembler obtains sufficient eggs to make a carload 



THIRTY CENT BREAD 69 

he ships to his agents representing the packers, com- 
mission men, warehouse men and other egg specu- 
lators. 

The eggs are gathered in warm weather. A per- 
centage of each carload lot consists of very fresh 
eggs, only a few days old, and other eggs, which 
are from a week to two weeks old. All were fresh 
before hostile atmospheric and temperature condi- 
tions had a chance to operate on them. 

During April, May and June eggs, collected and 
handled as farm side-line products, from all parts of 
the south, southwest, and west, are placed in storage 
for use during October, November, December, Jan- 
uary and February. Those eggs come out of storage 
no better than when they went in. All of them have 
to be candled before they are sold by the jobber to 
the retail grocer. 

During the fall and winter 98 per cent, of all the 
eggs consumed are candled storage eggs. The other 
2 per cent, consist of eggs more or less fresh, sold 
at fancy prices. 

As the eggs are candled they are graded. The 
grading of eggs to the uninitiated is a curious and 
wondrous affair. 

Most exchanges classify eggs as follows : 
Fresh gathered, 
Held, 

Refrigerator, 
Limed. 

Each of these classes is in turn graded into : 
Extras, 
Extra firsts, 
Firsts, 



70 THIRTY CENT BREAD 

Seconds, 
Thirds, m 
No. i dirties, 
No. 2 dirties x 
Checks, 
Known marks. 
There are many other subdivisions of each of these 
grades known as: 

Fresh gathered extras, 

Fresh gathered firsts, 

Fresh gathered seconds, 

Fresh gathered thirds. 

Held firsts, 

Held seconds. 

Refrigerator extras, 

Refrigerator firsts, 

Refrigerator seconds, 

Refrigerator thirds. 

Limed extras, 

Limed firsts, 

Limed seconds, 

Limed thirds. 

Weak yolks. 

Very weak yolks. 

Heated eggs. 

Leakers. 

Crax. 

Embryos. 

Blood rings. 

Light spots. 

Heavy spots. 

Musty eggs. 

Black rots. 

Red rots. 



THIRTY CENT BREAD 71 

§ 49 — the; system 

The best of these grades are packed in cartons of 
one dozen each and sold as "strictly fresh." 

The "leakers," "crax," and "light spots" are 
broken out, packed in thirty-pound cans, frozen, and 
sold to bakers. 

The system which permits a perfectly good egg 
to become partly bad, nearly bad, or entirely bad is 
not a system which should be tolerated even in times 
of plenty. In times of scarcity every farmer and 
every egg gambler in the land should be compelled, 
through federal intervention, to prevent the unneces- 
sary loss, and all the evils growing out of it which 
we are about to describe. 

Prior to 191 7 April eggs were put into cold stor- 
age at a cost of between 18 and 21 cents a dozen. 
The storage charges for the season added 40 cents 
to this cost per case. Interest added 22 cents per 
case, cartage 3 cents, and insurance 6 cents, which 
added to the total 71 cents per case of thirty dozen 
each. 

At 19 cents per dozen a case of thirty dozen eggs 
when it went into storage cost $5.70. Plus the extra 
charges of 71 cents each case of eggs represented an 
investment of $6.41, or 21 1-3 cents a dozen. 

Six months later these same eggs were sold to the 
retail trade at from 29 cents to 40 cents a dozen. 
The retailer sold them to the consumer at prices 
ranging from 33 cents to 55 cents a dozen. 

The tgg gamblers who, November 1, 1913, still 
held 1,800,000 cases of storage eggs in New York, 
Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston and Jersey City at a 
total cost of $11,538,000, including storage, inter- 



7 2 THIRTY CENT BREAD 

est, cartage, and insurance, sold them at an average 
price of 30 cents a dozen or $9 a case, thus realizing 
on the eggs held by them $16,200,000, showing a 
profit of nearly $5,000,000. 

The jobber who purchased these eggs from the 
warehousemen sold them to the retailer at another 
profit of 2 cents a dozen or 60 cents a case, thus 
netting another lump sum of $1,080,000. 

The retailers' profit on the same eggs, at from 5 
to 10 cents a dozen, was not less than $3,000,000. 

In all this taking of profit on the eggs sold in but 
five cities of the United States the consumer secured 
a food product ranging in quality from good to bad, 
the vast intermediate bulk of which can be accu- 
rately described as "poor." 

In 19 1 7 the situation as regards quality, loss 
through deterioration, and a clumsy, bungling sys- 
tem of handling remains unchanged. We have not 
only learned nothing from our mistakes of other 
years, but now stand face to face with a situation 
which threatens us with a nondescript mass of eggs 
which before Christmas, 19 17, will be worth $1 a 
dozen. 

§ 50 — the; gambi^r 

One New York City egg gambler of my acquaint- 
ance purchased on March 1, 1917, from fifty other 
egg gamblers 50,000 cases of eggs which would not 
even be laid until April on contract prices ranging 
between 2^-/2 and 26^4 cents a dozen. 

The wholesale market price of eggs March 28, 
1917, was 32 cents. The fifty little gamblers, who 
contracted to sell to the one big gambler (at from 
2$y 2 to 26% cents a dozen) eggs so fresh that they 



THIRTY CENT BREAD 73 

were still unlaid, found that they would have to pay 
32 cents for the eggs, which they were forced to de- 
liver at 2^/2 and 26% cents. 

The big gambler held them to their contracts. To 
look upon those contracts as scraps of paper would 
mean that they would lose their standing in the ex- 
change. It would also mean the destruction of their 
credit. They had to pay to the big gambler an aver- 
age gambling debt of 6 cents a dozen, or $1.80 a 
case, on 50,000 cases, or $90,000, as their penalty 
for speculating in eggs which had no existence and 
which neither the fifty little gamblers nor the one 
big gambler were ever destined to see. 

Each of the fifty little gamblers must recoup his 
losses, every cent of which will sooner or later be 
charged up to the public. 

This episode, which occasioned a tremendous fu- 
rore in the New York Mercantile Exchange and the 
New York Butter and Egg Exchange, is charac- 
teristic of one of the food abuses over which no state 
in the Union attempts to exercise any control. 

We now know that because heavy fowl sold in 
tremendous quantities in 1916 at prices as high as 
26 cents a pound wholesale, and because grain is 
high that the outlook, due to a combination of natu- 
ral shortage in production, a natural increase in the 
cost of production, the manipulation of the market 
by gamblers, and the inevitable demands of Europe 
for a heavy export, promises, with eggs going into 
storage at 31 cents, instead of 19, 20, or 21 cents, 
as in other years, they will begin to come out of stor- 
age in October at from 45 to 50 cents a dozen whole- 
sale. . 

At these wholesale prices the warehouses will turn 



74 THIRTY CENT BREAD 

them over to the jobbers who will sell them to the 
retailer at from 48 to 53 cents a dozen. The poorest 
of them will be sold to the consumer at from 60 to 
65 cents a dozen and the best of them at from 85 
cents to $1 a dozen. 

§ 51 — F3D3RAI, CONTROL 

These plain, unvarnished truths urge the federal 
commissioner of agriculture to extend his efforts to 
control a grave and intolerable situation consider- 
ably beyond the appeal which he has already made 
to the patriotism of the farmer and egg gambler. 

The use of tons of spot eggs by pound cake bakers 
all over the country is one of the lamentable results 
of the failure of the federal government to attempt 
to control the slovenly and destructive system now 
employed in gathering, storing, and shipping eggs 
for market. The consumption of disguised rotten 
eggs by the public grows out of these wasteful 
methods. 

The beginning of the trouble lies in the rules gov- 
erning transactions in eggs in the mercantile ex- 
changes of our large American cities. 

These rules are so wide open that they admit to 
congested centers tons of rotten eggs which ought 
never to arrive and which the receiver who is obliged 
to pay for them charges up to the consumer. 

§ 52 — MANIPULATION 

For instance, the regulations governing the classi- 
fication known as " fresh gathered firsts" permit a 
case of such eggs to contain only 80 per cent, of full 



THIRTY CENT BREAD 75 

sweet eggs, allowing a margin of 20 per cent, or a 
full six dozen of eggs, to consist of anything sweet 
with shells on. 

Under these loose regulations the shipper can send 
to the city a mixture of eggs in which he works off as 
real "fresh gathered firsts" eggs that are not fresh 
gathered at all, but for which the full exchange 
price is paid. 

"Extra firsts" are permitted to contain in each 
case i 1 /* dozens of poor eggs for which the dealer 
pays the full market price. 

"Firsts" are permitted to contain two dozen poor 
eggs to the case. The dealer pays the full market 
price for them. 

"Seconds" are permitted to contain three dozen 
poor eggs to the case. 

"Thirds" are permitted to contain five dozen poor 
eggs to the case. 

If the loss on candling shows more than the maxi- 
mum permitted by the exchanges the seller simply 
allows the buyer a discount of 5 per cent. The 
buyer then candles out his rots and spots, adds his 
loss to the cost of the good eggs and disposes of the 
rejects as best he can. The baker gets most of 
them. 

The farmer does not profit by this arrangement 
and certainly the consumer derives no benefit from 
it. The egg gambler, who buys eggs before they 
are laid to sell from the storage warehouse six or 
ten months later, is the only man whose purse is 
filled through this operation. 

In 191 5 and 1916 the office of the attorney general 
of New York State collected evidence proving that 
egg gamblers systematically squeeze the market 



76 THIRTY CENT BREAD 

through their refusal to put the price down to a fig- 
ure at which the public will buy, holding their eggs 
instead as a "gamble on the future/' 

The attorney general's office proved that in addi- 
tion to the surplus on hand in cold storage, fresh 
eggs were coming into the market every day and 
that many honest receivers were willing to take their 
losses on them and sell at lower prices, although the 
market quotations were, in the meantime, kept arbi- 
trarily high in the hope that the receipt of fresh 
eggs during the following week might be light. 

This system the state was able to prove forced 
the honest receiver of eggs to fall in line with the 
speculator in order to hold his shippers in the coun- 
try. To do otherwise would quickly make it impos- 
sible for him to obtain any eggs at all. No farmer 
would ship to a receiver if the latter undersold or 
attempted to undersell the speculator. 

§ 53 — SUPPLY AND DEMAND 

That this is the system which egg speculators de- 
scribe as "the law of supply and demand" was 
charged as long ago as December 9, 19 13, in a re- 
port filed with Federal Judge Kohlsaat by Charles 
B. Morrison, master in chancery. 

Morrison's report alleged that within the Chicago 
Butter and Egg Board was a smaller organization 
known as the Elgin Butter and Egg Board, which 
sets prices for the wholesale market. 

He declared that at periodical meetings these 
boards, acting in unison, established values in a man-' 
ner that forced the wholesale prices down as low as 
possible during the flush period of production and 



THIRTY CENT BREAD 77 

that agents were then sent forth to contract for all 
available products at the arbitrarily fixed quota- 
tions. 

On the same day Representative McKeller of Ten- 
nessee, who charged the cold storage men with re- 
sponsibility for high prices, assailed the Department 
of Agriculture for publishing a report which he de- . 
scribed as an effort of the department to whitewash 
the cold storage men. 

Investigations, all of them resulting in the same 
conclusions, have been conducted in Massachusetts, 
Missouri and Pennsylvania, as well as in New York 
and Illinois. In spite of these investigations and 
their findings the egg situation remains to-day in the 
same condition in which it has existed since cold 
storage became a national institution. 

§ 54 — Th£ banks 

Powerful banking interests are seriously involved 
in the conduct of the egg business. In New York 
City the bankers loan the gamblers 75 per cent, of 
the value of the eggs in storage. In Chicago the 
bankers loan the warehousemen a hundred cents on 
the dollar for every egg stored. These loans are 
secured by constantly rising markets, and depend 
exclusively upon the regular, uninterrupted annual 
advance in values which begin to make themselves 
felt on a progressively increasing scale from the mo- 
ment the egg is slipped into the refrigerator until, 
within a period of from six to ten months later, it 
emerges as "strictly fresh/' 

The question of prices is of universal interest. 
For the poor it is a matter of daily and often of 



78 THIRTY CENT BREAD 

anxious consideration. Just prices and fair wages 
are two hinges on which revolves the economic wel- 
fare of the world. 



§ 55 TH£ SHORT DOI^AR 

March 29, 191 7, the Department of Labor an- 
nounced at Washington, D. C, that the annual food 
bill of the average family had grown from $339.30 
in 1913 to $425.54 at the prices prevailing in March, 
1917. * 

"In ten years the advance in the cost of food," 
declared the Department of Labor, "has so far out- 
stripped wage increases that the workman who drew 
$3 a day in 1907 now finds himself just 6g cents a 
day worse off. 

"Despite the average increase of 19 per cent, an 
hour in wages in the last ten years," says the de- 
partment's statement, "the rising cost of foods has 
operated to reduce the pay of the American working- 
man about 16 per cent., expressed in terms of food 
his dollar will buy. 

"The workingman who made $3 a day in 1907 
working ten hours a day, in 1916 worked nine hours 
and thirty-six minutes a day and drew $3.48; but it 
cost him $4.17 to buy the same quantity of food 
his $3 would cover in 1907. 

"Cold storage, rebilling, reshipping, and withhold- 
ing of commodities from the market are suspected 
of contributing to the present abnormal rise in the 
prices of food. There is reason to fear that other 
elements than crop shortages and" war are conspir- 
ing to raise prices." 

The Department of Labor, expressing its views 



THIRTY CENT BREAD 79 

in this singular manner, did not know how accurately 
it hit the bull's-eye. 

On the proper solution of the problems of just 
prices and fair wages depends far more than the 
mere material prosperity of a nation. 

Extortionate prices and unfair wages form to- 
gether one of the most serious social and moral 
perils of the age. 

§ 56 — COMMERCIAL ETHICS 

The ethics of modern commercialism are not the 
ethics of justice. "Demand for your product the 
highest returns you can prudently hope to gain/' is 
one way of putting it in the trade. "We all want 
all we can get for anything provided we can get it 
without indictment," is another way of saying the 
same thing. 

Justice, the meaning of which is now absorbing 
the attention of all the people of Europe and Amer- 
ica, permits a margin of profits which will enable 
commerce to flourish in a healthy state and allow the 
life blood of trade to circulate freely through the 
veins and arteries of the social body for the com- 
mon good. 

Justice forbids excessive charges, a source of 
wealth to a few and a cause of hunger to many. 

The transactions of Mercantile Exchanges in but- 
ter, eggs, poultry, fruits, produce and provisions 
are all based on the theory that there is no decalogue 
in trade. 

The golden rule on which these transactions are 
based reads something like this, "Keep within the 
bounds of the law and do not exasperate the people 



80 THIRTY CENT BREAD 

to the danger point. Eliminate competition by all 
expedient means that you may safely increase your 
demands and multiply your profits in the surest way 
you can." 

§ 57 — SPECULATION 

Blue fish, for example, are put into cold storage 
in New York City at 9 cents a pound. After being 
held at a cost of one-half cent per pound per month 
they are taken out of cold storage at 25 and 30 cents 
a pound and shipped all over the country to be sold 
to the consumer at such prices as the consumer will 
pay. 

In June butter is put into cold storage to be taken 
out in the fall and winter at an arbitrary and fabu- 
lous advance in price. 

The legitimate functions of cold storage in carry- 
ing perishable foods from the glut season of the year 
to its lean periods are to be encouraged. But, the 
taking of excessive toll for no other reason than that 
one is able to withhold from commerce large quanti- 
ties of foods from six to ten months, outrages jus- 
tice, contributes nothing to the material prosperity 
of the masses, shrinks the purchasing power of the 
daily wage, and begets many internal social and 
moral evils. 

All efforts of the state and nation which have 
thus far been made to control speculation in food 
products have aborted. 

In times like these, when bloodless revolutions 
are possible, even in Russia, it behooves the govern- 
ment to take seriously an issue with which hereto- 
fore it has merely toyed. 

Our commercial standards of food speculation 



THIRTY CENT BREAD 81 

may be protected by law, but they have no element 
of justice or patriotism in them, and are therefore 
doomed. The sooner we heed this issue the sooner 
will many grave perils from within, now gnawing at 
the peace and welfare of our country, cease to dis- 
turb its social equilibrium and threaten with a dis- 
aster as terrible as war. 

§ 58 — MOBILIZATION 

These, then, are suggestions for the mobilizing of 
all our forces in order to produce and properly mar- 
ket sufficient foods to keep ourselves and our allies 
in a state of health during the present war: 

1 — Mobilize all our school and college boys from 
the ages of 16 to 19. Organize them into camps or 
squads. Assign them during the planting and har- 
vesting periods to the zones in which they are needed. 
Put them to work in the fields, orchards and food 
factories. They will look upon their experience as a 
lark and it will make men of them. 

2 — Place under federal control the railroads, pack- 
ing establishments, grain elevators, milling establish- 
ments and cold storage warehouses. 

3 — Construct portable dehydrating plants on 
freight car wheels so that they may be placed on 
sidings within trucking distance of all the farms of 
the country known by the Department of Agricul- 
ture to have allowed in other seasons their vegetables 
and fruits to rot for the reason that it did not pay to 
gather them, crate them and send them to market. 
Unskilled labor (boys) through the use of these 
portable dehydrating plants and those which justify 
a permanent structure can conserve for human use 



82 THIRTY CENT BREAD 

the 50 per cent, of vegetables and fruits which fed- 
eral officials inform us never reach the human table. 

4 — Place under federal control the fishing indus- 
try of the Atlantic and Pacific Coasts so that the 
enormous waste which results from our present sys- 
tem of rejecting "unsizeable" fish may be immedi- 
ately discontinued. 

5 — At the point of production brine and smoke all 
haddock and freeze and glaze all small fish that can- 
not be transported and consumed as fresh within 
three days of the catch. 

6 — Begin at once to organize the methods to be em- 
ployed in 191 8 in gathering, shipping and storing 
fresh eggs. 

7 — Organize at once a system to take effect imme- 
diately for the purpose of controlling the sanitary 
character and drying for human food the skim milk 
of the butter-producing states not utilized in the 
manufacture of cheese. 

8 — Stop immediately the refining of wheat, the 
bolting of corn and rye, the pearling of barley and 
the polishing of rice. 

9 — Stop the use of grains in the feeding of cattle 
other than milk cows. 

10 — Stop the distillation of grain alcohol and whis- 
key except for medicinal purposes. 

11 — Stop the manufacture of technical products 
from corn. 

12 — Slaughter and store, to be used as needed, all 
steers and swine. 

13 — Stop the manufacture of highly milled and 
processed breakfast foods. Winnow all cereals for 
the zones in which they are needed, not to anticipate 
the actual requirements of such zones during the 



THIRTY CENT BREAD 83 

germinating period, June, July, August and Septem- 
ber, by more than thirty days. The adoption of this 
system will overcome all objections to the milling 
of whole grains now based on the fact that during 
the germinating period grains containing germ and 
bran are subject to weevil infestation and spoilage 
due to the decomposition of the fats of the germ. 

14 — Adopt regulations discouraging the purchas- 
ing of large orders of foodstuffs by individuals to 
be stowed away for future use. This panic-stricken 
looting of the nation's food supply by the individual 
consumer is quite as serious in diverting enormous 
food stocks from their legitimate channels as un- 
regulated storage and unrestricted home waste. 

If radical action is taken on those fundamentals, 
all of which can be modified in accordance with the 
unforeseen difficulties which time and place evoke, 
we will not only have sufficient food to supply all 
the wants of America, but from our reserve we can 
afford to assist our allies by exporting thousands 
of tons. 

If we do not do these things much misery lies 
ahead. 



